1. Field of the Invention
In general, the present invention relates to a graphic processing apparatus. In particular, the present invention relates to a graphic processing apparatus which is capable of painting colors on a graphic or hatching a graphic by expressing differences in color/hatching density and varying the color tone in accordance with simple commands entered by the user.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, by virtue of the popularization of the DTP (Desk Top Publishing) technologies and color printers, colored texts can be created with ease even at a general office. In addition, a full-color digital copy machine having a function to process texts and graphics has been developed and implemented. An example of such a full-color digital copy machine is disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 2-223275 (1990). By utilizing these technologies, a composer having knowledge and experience in the coloring field can compose texts by making a variety of studies of text composition over a long time without hurry in order to create high-quality text which reflects the intention of the composition.
In many cases, however, the general user does not know which part of text should be painted with a color in order to make the text easy to read. Even if parts of the text are each painted with a color on a trial-and-error basis, the resulting text is poor-looking and difficult to read and, thus, can not be said to have a high quality.
On the contrary, technologies disclosed in documents such as Japanese Patent Laid-open Nos. Hei 3-109874 (1991) and Hei 6-168310 (1994) allow improvement of the coloring and appearance of text to be implemented with ease even by a general user who has a lack of knowledge and design sense with respect to color arrangement.
The technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 3-109874 is used to provide complementary colors to characters included in a displayed color picture. However, its function to process and output text with a high-quality design to reflect the composition intention of the user is not adequate. On the other hand, the technology disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 6-168310 is a technology for converting input text into a layout and color arrangement of a finished image thereof which matches the objective of the composer. However, the composer can specify only the purpose and impression of the coloring. The composer can not step into things such as details of the coloring and the highlighting of regions of a picture in order to reflect the intention of the composer.
According to an invention disclosed in Japanese Patent Laid-open No. Hei 7-220101 (1995) with the title Text Processing Apparatus, a color-arrangement function which can be executed by merely entering simple design commands such as "Coloring," "Background Coloring" and "Emphasis-Relation" is proposed. Even with this technology, the composer can not step into the area, the degree of importance and other attributes of a region to be painted with a color in order to paint a color on the region in accordance with the attributes thereof. As a result, the processing is ended with coloring from a theoretical configuration/structure of a graph.
At any rate, arrangement of colors in accordance with the area and the degree of importance of a region to be painted with a color, which area and degree of importance are the basic attributes of coloring, is not taken into consideration no matter which technology is utilized. In many cases, a portion of a manuscript that should not be highlighted in accordance with the desire of the composer appears adversely as an emphasized portion. Such cases are a problem which remains to be solved.
The above description holds true of hatching of text. Hatching carried out without taking a way of highlighting a region based on hatching design/pattern into consideration can give rise to a problem that a region which should not be highlighted in accordance with the desire of the composer adversely appears as a highlighted area due to an effect of the hatching density.